Students majoring in non-science disciplines often have little exposure to computational thinking and working with computer code. At the same time, digital methods of analysis exert growing influence on the practice of many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The Wheaton College Digital History Project seeks to bridge this gap using tools from the field of digital humanities.

Project goals:

Teaching historical methods through transcription and markup of primary sources with TEI*-conformable XML**

WCDHP Timeline

2014

Students in History 302, Junior Colloquium (Methods for History Majors), worked in pairs to transcribe and mark up page spreads from the day book of Laban Morey Wheaton.

Students in History 233, U.S. Women, 1790-1890, transcribed and marked up the first issue of Rushlight, the Wheaton literary magazine, which students of Wheaton Female Seminary published with the help of their instructor Lucy Larcom in 1855.

2013

Students in First Year Seminar, History and Culture in the Digital Age, proofread and mark up page spreads from Eliza Baylies Wheaton’s pocket diaries

2012

Students in First Year Seminar, History and Culture in the Digital Age, transcribes and marked up page spreads from the daybook

Students in History 233–U.S. Women, 1790-1890–transcribed page spreads from the daybook

2011

Proof of concept for Encoding Historical Financial Records through meeting at Wheaton College, sponsored by Start-Up Grant from NEH Office of Digital Humanities

Poster on Encoding Historical Financial Records presented at DH 2011

2010

Poster/demo on 1862 travel journal presented at DH2010

Students in History 302, the methods course for History majors, transcribed and marked up page spreads from the daybook and wrote about them for the History Engine

2009

Poster on Encoding Financial Records presented at TEI Members Meeting

Students in History 302 began to transcribe and markup page spreads from Laban Morey Wheaton’s 1828-1865 daybook